Ellen: An Act of Bastardy

Christchurch, Hampshire in the mid-nineteenth century was an impoverished place, a market town whose inhabitants, living largely in small, rented, mud-walled cottages in streets known as Pit or Rotten Row, eked out a meagre living.  The location, although on the coast, was a remote one and the most common ways of making a living were through shepherding, fishing, as a tradesman or labouring on a farm. But, these occupations paid hardly enough to allow a worker to support a family, so most inhabitants became regular participants in the illicit trade of smuggling.  This last occupation was enabled by the town's proximity to the English Channel and the heathland surrounding it, where contraband was stowed pending the times when detection by customs officers was least likely.  Similarly, it was enabled when a flock of sheep crowding a road delayed the passage of those same officers in pursuit of a wagon containing rum, tobacco and silk.

The townspeople had taken to smuggling as a strategy to survive in a harsh and ungiving environment.  It seems they were always alive to new ways in which to make a living and when a new manufacturing industry set up shop in Christchurch, it was embraced enthusiastically by its inhabitants

This was the fusee watch chain industry.  Commencing in Christchurch in the late eighteenth century, it required nimble fingers and accurate eyesight to rivet its tiny chain links together to produce a chain as fine as horsehair.  Young girls gained employment making these chains from the age of 8, in the local factory or working from home, often at a specially extended window sill at the front of their houses, to catch the best light.  Families encouraged their young to become watch chain makers; their wages were a valuable addition to family income, and often meant the difference between paying the rent or not. 

As a source of work, watch chain making was thus a godsend to the average Christchurch family.  Previously, occupations open to its female inhabitants had been flax spinning, knitting silk stockings and plaiting straw for hats; watch chain making was able to be performed by children who were going to school as they could perform it at home on a part time basis.  The local workhouses provided some of the child labour employed by the manufacturers, but many of its employees lived at home with their families where the breadwinner had an ill-paid or seasonal occupation.  It was ill paid work itself; even by the 1890s the most a worker could expect to receive was only 8s 6 d per week.*

The industry flourished in the early part of the nineteenth and continued until 1899, when Hart's Fusee Factory was closed and the one remaining watch chain maker, Rose Drover, became a nursemaid. The industry declined slowly; my great-great aunt Louisa Boyt, born in 1853 and a watch chain factory employee from an early age, only ceased work as such during the 1890s. 

With meagre earnings and little to occupy themselves other than a Nonconformist Chapel, the townspeople of Christchurch were a rowdy lot in general.  They drank, swore and regularly got into fights with each other, even (or especially) the womenfolk who often assaulted each other when drunk.  Apart from twice-yearly fairs, the main form of entertainment for Christchurch's population was frequenting the taverns and ale houses present in every street, lane and alley of the town.  Petty Sessions records show repeat offenders, such as a woman called Keturah Jeffrey who was found guilty of assaulting a 20 year old woman known as Love Ward outside an ale house where she and her friend Ionida had been watching a Mummers^ play in 1853:

 

 After the Mummers had done...We left...As we were going out Jeffrey struck me on the side of  my face and pulled the crown of my bonnet out, took my apron away and kept it.  Threw me over in the road, tore the tail of my dress from my body...a young man named Duffett came out of the Halfway House, picked up my things for me...She had a baby on her left arm all the time.

Shrove Tuesday was a particular source of rowdiness, when a rabble regularly assembled and threw brickbats, potsherds, glass bottles and other dangerous missiles at the doors of the town's inhabitants.  Guy Fawkes Night saw similar behaviour and the Magistrates Court records are full of public order offences as well as those relating to the desertion of families, along with another offence known as bastardy, the act of giving birth to an illegitimate child, and as such, levelled only at women.

Bastardy usually came to the attention of the relevant authorities by the admission of a pregnant, unmarried woman to the local workhouse, there being no hospitals available at this time. The unfortunate woman was questioned by the court as to the identity of the father of her child, who was then pursued by the parish for maintenance for his 'bastard'.

And so it was that Ellen Boyt, unmarried, aged 19 of Christchurch, Hampshire, watch chain maker, was charged with an act of bastardy (or 'misconduct') in 1857.  She had given birth to a baby girl she named Charlotte on 26 February of that year in the Christchurch Workhouse before going back to the house of her parents to live with the baby. She could not write her name as she signed her daughter's birth certificate with an 'X.'  As Ellen was unmarried, the baby's surname was recorded as "Boyt."

It may have been that Ellen's baby was conceived at the May Fair held in Christchurch.  It appears this sort of thing mainly went on in the warmer months, or in stables, when the woman concerned was a single one and did not have access to a marriage bed.  One said her 'connection' happened in this way throughout August, "generally in the afternoon."

The father of Ellen's baby was not forced into a shotgun wedding organised by the parish, as had been the case in the previous century when the father of a bastard was taken into custody and guarded while a marriage licence was purchased for the mother of his child and a parson paid to perform their marriage.  Ellen stayed living with her poor, but generous parents and younger siblings as well as her baby in the down-at-heel location of Purewell for the next few years, apparently having no continuing relationship with the child's father.  If he was a typical Christchurch man, and Ellen told Charlotte he was a 'sawyer', he would have had little money to give to her for their baby's upkeep.

'Connections' were always liable to take place.  Young men who were apprentices were not allowed to marry until they were 21.  It appears the fathers of bastards were not all callous or irresponsible; they were simply hamstrung by the laws of the time. 

But Ellen's sawyer did not come to her rescue.  She was to remain living with her family and working as a watch chain maker until she left Christchurch for London with her daughter some time between 1861 and 1863.  It was to Islington, in north London that she fetched up, perhaps unsurprisingly, as Islington is adjacent to Clerkenwell, a long established watch making location where the 1861 census recorded 877 manufacturers of clocks and watches.  Her migration was no doubt based on economics; she and Charlotte must have been a burden to the family, her father having died prior to the 1861 census.  There were four younger children still living at home and her mother was working as a cook and domestic in 1861.  Although Louisa and Eliza, the two youngest children aged 9 and 11 were 'scholars', it is likely they too worked as watch chain makers when not at school.

By 1871, Eliza and Louisa, their mother having died, were still living in Purewell as boarders with the Rose family.  Hannah and David, their older sister and brother, a watch chain maker and bricklayer respectively in 1861, no longer lived in Christchurch.  Hannah, and later Eliza, may have moved to Bournemouth, only five miles from Christchurch which, with its newly built hotels and villas, gave opportunities for employment to former chain makers as servants and chambermaids.  Ellen and Charlotte clearly felt themselves to be a burden on their family, but Ellen may also have felt there was little future for Charlotte as a watch chain maker, with its low pay and the fact the work was becoming increasingly less available.  In any event, Charlotte went to school; she was eventually able to write reasonably well and as a member of the poorer classes, Ellen may have reasoned that employment as a servant would always be available to her and more available in London, with its growing upper middle class.

And so Ellen and Charlotte joined the mid-19th century exodus of poor, working class women from country England to its capital to try their luck in that teeming metropolis where the streets, if not paved with gold, held better paid opportunities for willing workers than watch chain making in the impoverished, crowded, hand-to-mouth melee that was Christchurch.

Reference: The Christchurch Fusee Chain Gang Sue Newman, Amberley 2010
*The Christchurch Fusee Chain Gang, page 69
^Mummers were troupes of actors who performed seasonal folk plays.  These plays often contained plots based on the underlying themes of duality and resurrection.  A battle, representing good against evil, often took place between two or more characters. Main characters included a Hero, his chief opponent, a Fool and a quack Doctor.  Either the Hero or his opponent (generally the Turkish Knight in southern England) are killed during their battle and the Doctor restores the dead man to life, with  much conjecture from minor characters, such Little Devil Doubt and Robin Hood along the way.

The writer is the great granddaughter of Charlotte Boyt.

"Tell Your Mother Holborn's Still There!"

"Tell your mother Holborn's still there!" is the postscript to a letter sent in 1950 from London to my mother by Vic, an English friend.  He had worked with her and become acquainted with my grandmother Lily, a former Londoner, during his time living in Australia.

Holborn is adjacent to what is now Coram's Fields, which stand on what was the forecourt of the St.Pancras Foundling Hospital.  If you walk through the remains of the Hospital's gatehouse at the southern end, you enter into Lamb's Conduit Street, Holborn.  It seems my grandmother Lily ventured in this direction during her childhood at the Hospital, rather than into the adjacent Bloomsbury, before she finally left the area in 1897 to go into domestic service in another part of London. 

I imagine my grandmother and the other children of the Foundling Hospital walking in about 1890 in a crocodile through its gate and down Lambs Conduit Street into the rest of Holborn.  Perhaps they were on their way to Lincoln's Inn Fields, where they could run and play freely, or maybe they walked further south, to Victoria Embankment, from where they could see the Thames.

Many of the buildings in Holborn today were built after the end of the nineteenth century, including Holborn Tube Station, which dates from 1906.  The old Edwardian Holborn is found today near Grape Street and the more modern one near the Kingsway.  Lambs Conduit Street, at the time of my visit in 2013, was a pleasant, pedestrianised thoroughfare full of boutiques, cafes and shops and the admirable People's Supermarket.  It has been a local high street since before 1817, when 78 of its houses were occupied by retailers selling everything from cakes and medicines to toys and books. 

Plenty of wares were no doubt available for sale in the street at the end of the nineteenth century, perhaps encouraging Lily to develop her habit of acquiring china, glassware, silverware, hats and jewellery.  She set great store by having goods of quality throughout her life.

On the left, as the foundlings walk down Lambs Conduit Street from the gatehouse, they pass The Lamb, now a Grade II listed Victorian pub, at number 94.  Another Victorian pub, The Perseverance, is at number 63.  Twenty-two inns or taverns were recorded in Holborn in the 1860s, so it seems unavoidable that the foundlings would see these establishments and hear sounds of carousing and merriment from within as they passed by.
Lambs Conduit Street runs into Red Lion Street from which Lambs Conduit Passage will take the foundlings into Red Lion Square, after they walk past two more pubs: The Enterprise at 38 Red Lion Street and The Dolphin, dating from the 18th century, on the north eastern corner of the Passage and Red Lion Street.  The foundlings, as they pass through the square, will notice numbers 14 - 17, still in existence today, which date from 1684 when they were built by speculative builder Nicholas Barbon, as well as other dilapidated houses dating from the 17th century.  Number 17 was briefly the residence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter and he recommended the premises, despite their dampness and decrepitude, to William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones in the 1850s.  Later, in 1861, Morris set up the first headquarters of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co at 8 Red Lion Square to produce designs of furniture and furnishings using traditional craft methods, leading to the movement which became the Arts and Crafts Movement.  The company moved to Queen Square, situated in Bloomsbury to the north, in 1881.

From Red Lion Square, the foundlings walk down Gloucester Street, across High Holborn and into Little Turnstile which connects with Gate Street before they reach Lincoln's Inn Fields.  Just before Little Turnstile, the foundlings will see the Royal Music Hall on High Holborn, also known as the Holborn Music Hall and originally a Noncomformist chapel.  Walter Besant says in Holborn & Bloomsbury, published 1903, that: "After 1840 it became a hall with lectures being given by free thinkers before being adapted to its present purpose in 1857."

At number 4 Gate Street the foundlings glance at the buildings known as Newton's Buildings, reputedly built in about 1658.  They may also stray into Little Queen Street, which was cleared to make way for the construction of Kingsway in 1900.  Larger streets, such as Great Queen Street, survived.  It housed the Novelty Theatre which hosted the London premiere of A Doll's House in 1889, finally closing in 1941.  At number 12 Gate Street, the Ship Tavern, established 1549, could be seen in an incarnation closer to its original from than the one on view today.  I'm sure some curious foundlings succeeded in straying from the eyes of their masters and mistresses to get a closer look at the commercial establishments in Holborn while they were on rare excursions from the Hospital.

Slightly further west, if the foundlings cross what is now Kingsway and continue down High Holborn, they will come to a shop on the corner of Newton Street, otherwise known as 207 High Holborn.  It's currently a Cards Galore shop, but during its history has been a pawnbroker, jewellery or antique shop after starting life in about 1834 as a tobacconist.  By the 1880s, a jeweller by the name of Charles Shapland had taken over and ran it with a partner named Cloud as a clockmaking and pawnbroking business specialising in old jewels. Today, the shop still has its wooden frontage with wrought iron cresting, popular during the late nineteenth century.  The foundlings would have been wide-eyed had they been able to view the contents of its windows, their experience of the luxuries within so limited as to be non-existent.

If the foundlings are walking directly to Victoria Embankment, after passing Lincoln's Inn Fields, they will come upon 13-14 Portsmouth Street, the home of the Old Curiosity Shop, a building which has existed as a shop since it was built in the 16th century.  A dairy during the 17th century, it is reputedly the oldest surviving shop in Britain and immortalised by Charles Dickens in his novel of the same name, although the shop on which his book is based was actually nearer to Leicester Square. 

Strangely enough, there is an Australian connection to the Old Curiosity Shop, through the Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn's four-times-great grandfather Andrew Tempany, a theatrical entrepreneur and actor.  He leased the premises in 1859 as well those next door at 15-16 Portsmouth Street, where he set up house.  By 1862, when he is recorded as being of 3 Little Wild Street in the Drury Lane area of Holborn, he was bankrupt and had been sent to a debtor's prison.  Upon release, he worked as a clerk before being admitted to the Holborn Union Workhouse where he died in 1876.  His daughter Elizabeth emigrated to Australia in 1863 aged 21 and gave birth there to Ben's great great grandmother.  Andrew's son William had previously been transported to the colony for horse stealing - an act most likely precipitated by his mother Honor's death in 1849 during London's cholera epidemic.  She left four young children and their father struggled to keep them fed and clothed; his theatrical and thespian endeavours failed, leading him to describe himself as an 'accountant' in the 1861 census, though his original occupation was that of "paint-stainer."  Charles Dickens himself could not have imagined a more Dickensian character.

The foundlings, if they look to their right as they pass through Lincoln's Inn Fields, could not help but notice the area known as Clare Market which spread through a maze of narrow interconnecting streets.  The market sold mostly meat, as well as fish and vegetables.  Not affected by the Great Fire of London, decrepit Elizabethan buildings survived until 1900, when the area, by then a slum, was demolished to create Kingsway.  By 1878 though, Walter Besant reports "a mission chapel had been established at its centre, together with schools and other benevolent and charitable institutions, such as a soup kitchen, a home for needlewomen and a workingmen's club had also gradually grouped."

This area had always been a busy, bustling thoroughfare, even in 1720 when Little Queen Street was described by the map maker Strype as being "a place pestered with coaches."  By the time of Walter Besant's investigations, it had "the heavy traffic of the King's Cross omnibus passing through it."

Besant describes the Holborn Restaurant which formed part of one side of Little Queen Street as "a very gorgeous place and within is a very palace of modern luxury.  It stands on the site formerly occupied by the Holborn Casino or Dancing Saloon."  The foundlings must have gazed in wonder at such a luxurious temple of the upper class, or palace of racy entertainment as it was in its earlier incarnation.

If the foundlings continue walking down Little Queen Street, through Clare Market and onto Great Queen Street, past Great Wild Street, past the "Artizans Dwellings" indicated on Walter Besant's 1903 map and then go beyond Drury Lane, they will reach Covent Garden.  Bounded on the east by Drury Lane and Long Acre to the north, the Royal Opera House is just south of Long Acre.  The neo-classical market building designed by Charles Fowler in 1830 is the one still in existence today as Covent Garden Market, so if any of the foundlings manage to sneak away from their crocodile, they will gasp in awe at this magnificent glass roofed building and the abundance of goods and wares available for sale therein.

If, instead of going down Lambs Conduit Passage to Red Lion Square, the foundlings continue walking down Red Lion Street and then turn left on Theobalds Road, they will come to Gray's Inn Gardens, another open space where they can run freely and admire the cherry, birch and elm trees and 19th century buildings which still surround this garden square.  The square was the place in the early 19th century where the poet Shelley, severely in debt, used to meet his future wife Mary Godwin on Sundays, the only day of the week when debtors could not be arrested.

Should the foundlings venture down Gray's Inn Lane (now Gray's Inn Road) and into Little Gray's Inn Lane (now Mount Pleasant) they will be confronted by the Holborn Union Workhouse.  Foundling Hospital officials could well have pointed out the grim façade of this building to the foundlings as a place where they would end up should they not apply themselves diligently in the apprenticeships they will enter upon leaving the Hospital.  Some buildings of the Holborn Union Workhouse remain today behind the gates of a plumbing company on Gray's Inn Road and in the back streets behind Mount Pleasant, there is an L-shaped building several storeys high with large Victorian warehouse style windows which housed the Casual Wards of the workhouse.

A little further along from Gray's Inn Lane, if the foundlings turn into High Holborn and continue to Holborn Circus, they will come upon the quiet, mysterious cul de sac known as Ely Place, the former residence of the Bishops of Ely and which houses the magnificent St Etheldreda Chapel, the oldest Roman Catholic church in Britain. 

The gardens of St Etheldreda were said to produce the finest strawberries in London and a Strawberry Fayre was held there every June.  By Charles Dickens's time, the fields of saffron which had surrounded Ely Place had given way to slum areas and it was to the street called Saffron Hill that Dickens had the Artful Dodger take Oliver Twist.  The infamous Fagin's den and Thieves' Kitchen were nearby.  I wonder if any plucky foundlings managed to attend a strawberry fair in Ely Place, as it's not certain the Hospital would have allowed them such frivolous activity.

More likely than not, though, the foundlings would have marched in their crocodile towards Victoria Embankment and its gardens, created in 1874.  In summer, these gardens are open until 9.30 pm, Victoria Embankment having been lit by either electricity or gaslight since 1878.

It is here the foundlings are able to run, play games, cartwheel and be free of their daily routine for at least a few hours.  So many sights and sounds have they seen on their path to this destination, they have had a truly memorable journey through the diverse and fascinating place that was Holborn in the 1880s and 1890s.

References:
Holborn & Bloomsbury (1903) Walter Besant.  Available from Project Gutenberg
awalkinhistory.blogspot.com
londonhistoricshops.blogspot.com
Who Do You Think You Are? SBS Australia, Episode 3, Season 2, 17 January 2012
ucl.ac.uk/bloomsbury-project
londonsstreets.blogspot.com
british-history.ac.uk
londongardenstrust.org
londonist.com
Neighbourhood Watch: Article by Josh Sims, Evening Standard, 18 October 2013

Pictured: The front door of The Lamb: 94 Lambs Conduit Street, Holborn